Though the Web-fueled reptile romp scored a 64 on the Tomatometer at www.rottentomatoes.com — a more-than-respectable score for a B-grade horror flick — its box-office numbers didn’t match the hype. The film-industry tracker Box Office Mojo’s report, which bore the headline ” ‘Snakes’ All Hiss and No Bite,” said the film earned an estimated $15.3 million since its opening Thursday night.

That’s not bad — for an end-of-summer leftover. But for a film hyped as a groundbreaking collaboration of a studio and its fans, it’s pretty anemic.

How bad is it? Even the studio guy couldn’t put a positive spin on it.

“With all the expectations, you have to say we would be disappointed,” David Tuckerman, New Line’s president of distribution, told Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray. “But ‘Snakes on a Plane’ did what tracking said it would, and it basically performed like a regular horror movie. When it was green-lighted, it didn’t have all this hype with it. It was a regular movie that was going to do 35 or 40 million bucks.” Tuckerman noted that “Snakes” was predictably driven by males under 25.

You can read the complete report here and check out the Tomatometer here.

If that prediction holds, “Snakes” will at least make back the money it took to make the film. But how’s this for embarrassing? Subtract the Thursday-night screenings (as the box-office trackers will in compiling their weekend reports), and “Snakes” didn’t even win the weekend. It finished second to the three-week-old “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” which earned an estimated $14.1 million Friday-Sunday to “Snakes’ ” $13.85.

This despite the fact that when the critics finally got to see “Snakes,” a surprising number liked it. For every critic who dismissed it as lame and predictable, another reveled in its badness. It received positive reviews from the New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post and Newsday, and the Associated Press’ Christy Lemire declared, “This is an event. It’s a rare example of a film not just living up to the hype, but surpassing it. And it’s the best time you’ll have at the movies all summer, if not all year.”

Obviously not everyone believed her. Note to New Line and other fraidy-cat studios: Next time, show your films to critics. At the very least, it can’t hurt. Could “Snakes” have performed worse had their been lots of opening-day reviews out there? Doubtful. Could it have performed better? Probably.

Lots of critics also made the “Rocky Horror” connection, predicting “Snakes” could become a midnight movie/audience-participation favorite like the ’70s cult hit that originally bombed at the box office. If that pans out, “Snakes” may well get the last laugh. OK, make that last hiss.